BAR GIR.LS AT R.ISK sions like this. In the morning, we heard the pipes of the boy goatherds, steerIng their goats around our encampment. At night, we climbed up on top of the con- tainers, away from snakes, to lay our blankets out. And the mrnboys, though they did not make a big deal about it, all slept with weapons at their sides, ranging from hatchets to tire irons. Their caution belied the idyllic look of the countryside. All the work was done by the turn- boys-they were kept busy cooking (mostly chicken or goat stew and ugali, a chunky starch dish, at which Obadiah ex- celled)-and by Cromwel, the mechanic. Replacing the silinda hedi was a time- consuming job for skilled hands, and Cromwel seemed to have them. The more covered with oil he got, the happier he seemed to be; there in Malek's engine compartment, he had no boss but him- sel[ Bad cylinder heads, he explained to me, were a fairly common problem. ''Transami has a shop that does nothIng but recondition them-I used to work there. But the reason these trucks break so much is that everything in them is re- conditioned. You see, we do not buy new parts. They are costly and must be im- ported. We fix the old. They last for a while, then they break again." He called out to Stephen to pass him a tork renchi from the tulboksi. Part of the mzungu mystique, I came to realize, was that the faraway lands where people like me lived were the source of all this machinery-of its manufacture and design. Trucking com- panies there got their parts new, "factory fresh." Somebody in mzungu-Iand acm- ally got to drive trucks when they were new. Perhaps most essential, I thought, taking an unexpected pride in the fact, was that we named the trucks and named the parts. The first afternoon, it rained, but Cromwel worked on; the truck "bonnet" provided him with a roof: and he was so coated in oil he looked waterproof: I sat in the cab and read and was tutored in Kiswahili by Francis and slept. Early the second afternoon, the skies cleared, the clothing dried, Cromwel finished, and a large hawk landed on a snake crossing the road by the trucks. It stood there for a long tIme, pecking away at the snake, as we watched from the cabs. R UNZWEWE, our last stop before Rwanda, was another collectIon of small, low buildings at a crossroads in a 67 \\ ''Denial by Beverley. " . barren landscape. All had roofed front porches and rear courtyards and were set back far enough for rows of trucks to park in front. We arrived in midafternoon, famished, and entered a café. The tall, thin Somali men who ran the place wore skirts. Our waiter spoke the menu: chicken, goat meat on rice, or beans. Most ordered goat meat. On the wall across from us was a portrait of Saddam Hussein; directly above our heads was an AlDS poster. It conveyed its message graphically, showing, left to right, a man in four phases of emaciation. He was practically dead in the last draw- ing; a cemetery with headstones under- neath made the message clear. Mwalimu read the caption out loud-" Utapunguza uzito kwa muda mfupi" -and cracked a joke in Kiswahili, which I missed. 'What does it say?" I asked as the oth- ers chuckled. "It says, 'Y ou'lliose weight in a short time,' and I said, 'They should call it the Truck-Driver Diet' " Though it had clearly been drawn by an Mrican hand, the poster carried a very Western message. The idea behind it was that a simple dose of correct information could make a huge difference in people's lives. The challenge was to print up . enough posters, and hang them in enough public places. But already I could see the barriers. "You know," Cromwel said, musing on the poster. "Some people are immune from AIDS." I told him that was not known for sure. "But they are not certain? Then I think it could be true!" Francis said that he had heard many different stories about AlDS. "First, we were told the wawngu brought it," he said. "Mzungu scientists were the first to identify it, but they think it came from here," I replied. Francis looked at me as if to say, Well, of course they do. "Then they said that truck drivers brought it!" he continued. "There was a time when the women wouldn't sleep with wazungu or drivers. Now they will, but they want condoms with people they don't know." "Yes," Cromwel said. "They want condoms with unmarried people. But if you talk wIth them and they come to trust you, then you don't have to." "That's right," Francis agreed. "If you're married, with kids, it's much bet- ter. And if you are healthy." ''You mean looking healthy," I said. ''You